Google's Friday homepage doodle honors the 224th birthday of Louis Daguerre, widely considered to be one of the founding fathers of photography.

The Google logo is set inside a picture frame, with the letters serving as the heads of people posing for an old timey, black-and-white family photograph.

The early photographs created by Daguerre, dubbed the daguerreotype, were images produced on "on a highly polished, silver-plated sheet of copper," according to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Daguerre got his start, however, as a painter, printmaker, and creator of the Diorama. These were not the mini models you were required to do in middle school, however. As described by La Tribune de l'Art, an early 1800s Diorama was "a theatrical method by which an immense canvas painted on both sides was animated by lights playing on the front or back alternatively, providing a veritable moving show from an immobile image."

But throughout the 1820s, Daguerre worked in France to create a lasting version of the images he saw via the camera obscura, a wood box with a lens that projected an image onto a frosted sheet of glass, according to the Met. By 1829, he enlisted the help of Nicéphore Niépce, who was working on the same issue. The duo made some strides, but Niépce passed away in 1833 before they had actually come up with a workable solution.

It was 1838 before Daguerre had anything presentable; the following year, he explained his process before a joint session of the Académie des Sciences and the Académie des Beaux-Arts.

"The process revealed on that day seemed magical. Each daguerreotype is a remarkably detailed, one-of-a-kind photographic image on a highly polished, silver-plated sheet of copper, sensitized with iodine vapors, exposed in a large box camera, developed in mercury fumes, and stabilized (or fixed) with salt water or 'hypo' (sodium thiosulphate)," the Met wrote. "Although Daguerre was required to reveal, demonstrate, and publish detailed instructions for the process, he wisely retained the patent on the equipment necessary to practice the new art."

As described by the Daguerrian Society, "Daguerre had very little else to do with the future of the miracle process that bore his name." The details were made public and enthusiasts improved upon it over the years. Daguerre and Niépce's son were provided pensions from the French government, which considered Daguerre's achievements "a gift to the world from France."

Not many of Daguerre's original creations remain. An 1839 fire destroyed most of his early work, the Met said. "In fact, fewer than twenty-five securely attributed photographs by Daguerre survivea mere handful of still lifes, Parisian views, and portraits from the dawn of photography."

About the Author

Chloe Albanesius has been with PCMag.com since April 2007, most recently as Executive Editor for News and Features. Prior to that, she worked for a year covering financial IT on Wall Street for Incisive Media. From 2002 to 2005, Chloe covered technology policy for The National Journal's Technology Daily in Washington, DC. She has held internships a... See Full Bio

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